Fallout 76 Isn’t Nearly As Bad As I’ve Heard

I played Fallout 76 for four hours last night. Here’s what I think of it so far.

I expected the gaming apocalypse going into Fallout 76. I thought the sky would tear itself open and swallow my character whole. That didn’t happen. It was actually a pretty smooth experience outside of some fps issues and input lag. It’s not nearly as bad as people would have you believe. Does Fallout 76 have bugs? I’m sure it does, but I can only comment on my experience of the game. I was never kicked from the server, I never lost any of my equipment, I never fell through the ground (New Vegas), got stuck and couldn’t progress (New Vegas), or died as soon as I spawned (New Vegas). Nothing happened to me at all while I played. The biggest issue I have with the game is the performance. I can run Fallout 4 on ultra with mods with no problem and I can barely run this game right now. Okay… saying barely is a bit much. I can run the game just fine on high settings with shadows turned down to medium, but I want to run this game on full ultra settings. I can’t do that right now and it bugs me.

Another issue that I have with the game is the input lag. It takes a few seconds for things to register. If I pick up a screw it’ll take a few seconds for it to disappear from the ground and appear in my inventory. I’m also not a fan of the limited inventory space that I hope I can increase later on. I’ve had to run back to my stash quite a few times already and I’m only level 5 right now. I get it. It’s the cool thing to hate on this game like it was with Mass Effect: Andromeda. Fallout fans can be brutal some times. If you like Bethesda’s Fallout games over the ancient originals (they’re great games by the way) then you’ll be talked down on and hated for all eternity for having a different opinion. Honestly, I think they’re the vocal minority because of how big Fallout has become. I’m getting sidetracked though. We’ll have that discussion at a later date. This game isn’t terrible. I actually had fun and I even teamed up with a random person I saw fighting some ghouls. We teamed up, killed the ghouls, cleared the building, got some loot and went our separate ways after thanking each other for the help. I never thought about how Fallout would play as a multiplayer game. I had grown accustomed to playing these amazing games by myself. I’m not calling Fallout 76 amazing so don’t freak out. It’s my least favorite Fallout game right now.

And let the nuking begin…

The lack of NPCs doesn’t bother me as much as I thought it would because there’s a lot of voice acting in the game from the audio tapes that I’ve found. One awesome tape had a young teenage boy apologizing to his dad for all of the mean shit he did before the bomb dropped and begging him to come home and protect him. That shit hit me in the feels. I’ve also completed a few main quest, a side quest, and a public event that had us going against an army of mad robots shooting lasers at everyone. So I grabbed my fire axe and went in charging because I want to save what little ammo I have for tougher enemies. I’m having fun and if you’re one of those people being plagued by bugs I’m sorry for you, but I can’t join your crusade on this game because I actually like it. If that makes me part of the “problem” then so be it. It’s not the first time I’ve defended “bad” games. Andromeda was one of my favorite games to release in 2017 and I even defended the universally hated Homefront. Is Fallout 76 perfect? Hell no, but it’s not a 3/10 game and, in MY opinion, doesn’t deserve the hate it’s been receiving from everyone. The funny thing is that when I went to reddit there are just as many post of people praising the game as the ones hating it. That seems to be a common occurrence with Fallout games these days.

I can see myself putting some hours in Fallout 76. I approached this game like I did ESO a few years ago and ESO is a good example here because you can see how much that game has improved since it released back in 2014. It went from a pay to play game to buy to play and it completely changed the way you play in the One Tamriel update. ESO is a real Elder Scrolls game now and I’m hopeful that in time Fallout 76 will do the same. No online game is going to launch the way you want it to. I’m not excusing all of the issues people have with the game in terms of bugs, glitches, and other technical issues like fps drops. Rip Bethesda apart for those because they need to learn to stop releasing buggy ass games to people. I don’t agree with everyone calling this a terrible game because it isn’t. There is a good game here that has potential to end up like ESO in the long run. I don’t regret my purchase at all and I can’t wait to buy another copy once my wife gets her new PC next year.

I’m pretty sure I already know the answer to this question, but I’ll ask anyway. What do you think of Fallout 76?

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4 Comments

I haven’t played 76 (I’m neither an avid fan of online multiplayer or of Fallout in general), but my wife is playing it and she actually likes it quite a bit. She has ended up having to endure some of the bugs and whatnot, but it hasn’t stopped her from being able to still find fun in the game. As you’ve said, right now it’s the cool thing to hate the game, but realistically there do seem to be good parts too.

My biggest issue is the performance right now. It’s terrible. And when I exit the game it crashes to desktop. There is good to be found here though. It feels like a single player Fallout game when I’m exploring and finding things to do and I’m reminded that it’s not when I see random people shooting crap with me :).

I’m not big on multiplayer games so that’s the reason why I’m not interested in this game. Sounds like another victim of the hate bandwagons people like to mindlessly jump on… sigh. I hope you continue to enjoy it!

When it comes to Fallout there are two kinds of fans. The ones that HATE everything Bethesda does to the series and the ones that LOVE the original games and New Vegas. Those are the ones that are screaming the loudest. I’m just focused on having fun. I don’t care if that bothers some people :).